Curious, do you have other SPS in the tank and how are they doing? I have experienced extremely low iodine levels in pro salt that would slowly kill sps frags and I couldn't figure out why until an ICP showed iodine at 0. I started dosing iodine and immediately my SPS that were hanging on came back to life and everything, including my LPS, suddenly began to grow again.
Not necessarily, I've used other brands of salt in the past and never had an issue with iodine. You may not be dosing enough. I use the same, Seachem's iodide, and dose 1ml daily for a 55g tank and it maintains a .03 level.
do a search here..Randy Holmes gives an explanation on iodine…it depletes fast as stated…I used other salts before and iodine was low in all of them…I just recently started dosing and the sps have responded, I don’t blame tmp for this
Sure, it was just a thought to check before pointing to your Turkish salt.
I have a few montis caps, 1 purple stylo, 1 green slimer and 3 forest fire digi. They are just "alive". The green monti cap has a lot of scattered browning all over. I had attributed all to possible low light intensity. I did an ICP/ATI sometime in September before adding corals. I will have to go back and look at the Iodine. Never thought of salt mix as a potential problem. I am just keeping an open mind and hope we can all figure out what the problem is if there is one. For one, I wouldn't know what to do with my stockpile otherwise.
How do you guarantee German TM especially with all this supply chain issues going on.
Very good point..BRS has stated they can not guarantee TMP from Germany…I would also like to point out I have had two boxes from Turkey and have stated I am not having any issues,in fact I did a water change today and not one thing was different..I’m leaning towards there is definitely something going on and thinking a bad batch
You have to physically verify the label on where it was made. I called BRS and they took me on the phone into the warehouse to look. They have a mix of German and Turkish made product of all lines of TM salt, not just Pro, and they can’t guarantee what you will get as it all depends what is grabbed by the picker. That said, your best bet it to buy through smaller dealer who can give the extra personal touch of validating what you will get or sticking to buying at a LFS.
That’s the million dollar question.
Jeez, 6 pages on the original thread and 13 pages on this one and still no answer?
@Dhaleillama this was the one I was telling you aboutTurkish made salt cost me nearly my entire sps collection. Close to if not exceeding 60k in rare sps. I am a medical doctor with an additional degree in biomedical sciences from Loyola University Chicago and Rutgers Medical school respectively. I have extensive experience in both biology and chemistry. I have extensive experience in narrowing down differential diagnosis to root cause of underlying disease and issues. I am 100 percent certain this salt caused my issue. I blamed it last when I discovered unbenounced to me I had been using salt made in a different facility than the original German production line. The Turkish bucket has an all plastic handle and the German one has a metal handle. It took me six weeks to determine it was the salt. I sent in three Icp analysis to triton. One of my tank water, one of a freshly mixed batch of Turkish salt and one of my RODI. The Turkish salt fresh batch had severely elevated iron and manganese which I was told was normal by TM.
Following my determination I switched salt brands and the first water change I saw an immediate improvement. Sps Which had zero polyp extension for six weeks IMMEDIATELY shot polyps out on a tiny water change. Prior to switching salts everytime I did a waterchange things would deteriorate more rapidly and often tip sps corals from STN into RTN and the following day I would pull out 2-3 colonies which had taken me 5 plus years of blood sweat and tears to grow. The following week I did a ten percent water change with my new salt brand on the daily. After every single water change the corals started looking better and better. After two weeks of doing this, the corals that were left were colored back up and on their way back to 100 percent health and coloration. I CHANGED NOTHING ELSE FOR THIS RESULT.
I posted about this issue back in September and was half ridiculed and half supported. I have had around 15 people contact my reefing business page with the exact same complaints and everytime the moment they switch off the salt to my recommendation of a new brand they see reversal of the issue. TM is still denying responsibility and I have remained cordial through the entire process. They have refunded me my money for the four buckets which cost me half of my collection but offered to pay nothing for my losses as they don’t believe their salt is the culprit. My intention is not to destroy or harm TM in anyway. I used their salt for 6 years and was integral in switching almost the entire high end Midwest market to their company. I was the biggest TM cheerleader of anyone. If people wanted me to do service on their tanks I would not agree until they threw out their salt and switched to my TM pro brand.
This is just my two cents and my experience with this specific issue. To say I’m dismayed and upset with what happened is an understatement. During that period of time I was staffing the ICU at my hospital and I spoke every waking moment of my free time at home pulling my hair out and working up this issue. It was the most exhausting and stressful time of my entire life. I have never experienced a crash in the 11 years of my hobby experience. I expanded my differential diagnosis for the etiology of the problem so wide I started blaming hair products and even thought maybe a client maliciously poured somthing into my tank because the paranoia had gotten so big. It was none of those things, it was the salt. End of story.
below please find before and after pics of colonies side by side. The pics on the left show my sps at the peak of the issue. The pics on the right show the same exact corals that made it through that issue on the other side alive and six weeks after switching salts and a 100 percent turnover of water change with the new brand.
-Ryan Cunningham MD MBS
Owner and operator of Chumminghamsreef
I wish there was a way to hold them accountable for this.
